Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement

Transcription

1 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement Timothy WILLIAMSON ABSTRACT 1. What are called intuitions in philosophy are just applications of our ordinary capacities for judgement. We think of them as intuitions when a special kind of scepticism about those capacities is salient. 2. Like scepticism about perception, scepticism about judgement pressures us into conceiving our evidence as facts about our internal psychological states: here, facts about our conscious inclinations to make judgements about some topic rather than facts about the topic itself. But the pressure should be resisted, for it rests on bad epistemology: specifically, on an impossible ideal of unproblematically identifiable evidence. 3. Our resistance to scepticism about judgement is not simply epistemic conservativism, for we resist it on behalf of others as well as ourselves. A reason is needed for thinking that beliefs tend to be true. 4. Evolutionary explanations of the tendency assume what they should explain. Explanations that appeal to constraints on the determination of reference are more promising. Davidson s truth-maximizing principle of charity is examined but rejected. 5. An alternative principle is defended on which the nature of reference is to maximize knowledge rather than truth. It is related to an externalist conception of mind on which knowing is the central mental state. 6. The knowledge-maximizing principle of charity explains why scenarios for scepticism about judgement do not warrant such scepticism, although it does not explain how we know in any particular case. We should face the fact that evidence is always liable to be contested in philosophy, and stop using talk of intuition to disguise this unpleasant truth from ourselves. 1. Scepticism about judgement. When contemporary analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they appeal to intuition. Intuitiveness is supposed to be a virtue, counterintuitiveness a vice. It can seem, and is sometimes said, that any philosophical dispute, when pushed back far enough, turns into a conflict of intuitions about ultimate premises: In the end, all we have to go on is our intuitions. Yet analytic philosophy has no agreed or even popular account of how intuition might work, no accepted explanation of the hoped-for correlation between our having an intuition that P and its being true that P. Since analytic philosophy prides itself Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. Dialectica Vol. 58, N o 1 (2004), pp

2 110 Timothy Williamson on its rigour, this blank space in its foundations looks like a methodological scandal. What is intuition? Why should it have any authority over the philosophical domain? On closer inspection, putative examples of intuition tend to dissolve. Its powers are easily exaggerated under the pressure of debate. I once heard a professional philosopher argue that persons are not their brains by saying that he had an intuition that he weighed more than three pounds. Surely there are better ways of weighing oneself than by intuition. But such inapposite appeals to intuition are not idiosyncratic misjudgements. They are signs of a deeper elusiveness. In contemporary discussion of the philosophical use of intuition, the canonical example is the judgement that the subject in a Gettier case does not know. Edmund Gettier (1963) constructed cases in which someone has a justified false belief that P, has competently deduced the true conclusion that Q from the premise that P, and on that basis has a justified belief that Q (in some relevant sense of justified ). Nevertheless, most philosophers judge, the subject, despite having a justified true belief that Q, does not know that Q. Since Gettier s article first appeared, the general consensus has been that such cases refute the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. But doubts have been raised about the soundness of the underlying methodology. For example, there is some evidence that the judgement that the subject does not know is not uniform across cultures (Weinberg, Stich and Nichols 2001). Why should we attach so much weight to a mere intuition? Why should our having it be good evidence for its truth? The term intuition tends to suggest something brute and simple. Yet, in judging that the subject in a Gettier case does not know, we employ a complex of cognitive capacities. Some of them are required because we are performing a kind of thought experiment. Gettier s cases are imaginary. To use one against the traditional analysis of knowledge, we must make modal judgements of at least two sorts. First, we must make a judgement of possibility: the case could have occurred (as described neutrally, without use of know or cognate terms). Second, we must make a counterfactual conditional judgement: if the case had occurred, then the subject would have had a justified true belief that Q without knowing that Q. Together, these two judgements entail another judgement of possibility: that there could have been someone who had a justified true belief that Q without knowing that Q. That result is inconsistent with the principle that, necessarily, one knows that Q if and only if one has a justified true belief that Q, and thereby forces the rejection of the analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, because analyses are understood as implying statements

3 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 111 of necessary and sufficient conditions. Thus one way of objecting to the use of such cases to establish epistemological conclusions is to raise doubts about the kinds of modal thinking on which it rests. How can we tell whether something non-actual is possible, or what would have been the case if it had occurred? Is what is peculiarly problematic about intuition its use in thinking about counterfactual possibilities? The epistemology of modal thought is notoriously problematic. Neither conceivability nor consistency is a safe guide to possibility. Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that these problems miss the heart of concerns about intuition. For a start, typical Gettier cases are quite mundane physical and psychological possibilities. They hardly stretch our capacity for modal thinking to the limit or beyond in the way that some bizarre, far-out thought experiments seem to do in metaphysics. Although the traditional analysis of knowledge may itself be intended to apply to all metaphysical possibilities whatsoever, both mundane and far-out, a mundane counterexample is sufficient, though not necessary, to refute it. For many practical purposes, it is advantageous to be capable of recognizing some truths about mundane possibilities. I might recognize that the path I am on is dangerous by recognizing that I could easily have failed to duck, and that if I had failed to duck then the falling stone would have hit me. In general, when we have at least a partial ability to verify or falsify the thoughts that R and that S, we typically also have in consequence at least a partial ability to verify or falsify the thoughts that it could easily have been that R and that if it had been that R then it would have been that S. We can project a given cognitive capacity for dealing with the actual at least some way into the possible, even though it is much clearer that we can do so than how we can do so. Our capacity for somewhat reliable modal and counterfactual thought is hardly surprising, for we cannot know in advance exactly which possibilities are or will be actual. We need to make contingency plans. Moreover, thought about counterfactual cases often casts light on actual cases: even if causation cannot be defined in counterfactual terms, we can learn much about actual causal connections by thinking through counterfactual cases. In practice, the only way for us to be cognitively equipped to deal with the actual is by being cognitively equipped to deal with a variety of contingencies, many of them counterfactual. Of course, a philosopher may raise specific sceptical doubts about the reliability of modal thinking, but that concern is not the same as the general concern about the reliability of intuition. We can test the last point by supposing that a Gettier case is actual, and that we know about it in adequate detail by standard empirical means. Indeed, we can probably discover actual examples by trawling through history; failing

4 112 Timothy Williamson that, we can bring about an actual Gettier case by playing a hoax on someone, if we can be bothered. In reacting to the actual case, we can dispense with the modal thinking about hypothetical Gettier cases. When we classify the case in epistemic terms, we need not first judge that it has some further features, then make the modal judgement that, necessarily, any case with those further features is a case of justified true belief without knowledge, and finally infer the conclusion that this is a case of justified true belief without knowledge. Rather, in the light of our first-hand experience of the case, we can make that epistemological judgement without taking any detour through modal judgements about hypothetical Gettier cases. Would this more direct procedure satisfy those who doubt the Gettier intuition? Hardly. They will probably reply that intuition is still required to classify the actual case as one of justified true belief without knowledge. Yet the non-modal procedure involves the same capacity to classify empirically encountered cases with respect to knowledge as we use when, for example, we classify a politician as not knowing the truth of his claims about terrorists. 1 The idea that intuition is required even to classify actual cases is elicited by many appeals to such cases in metaphysics. For example, some revisionary metaphysicians deny that there are mountains. 2 They deny a proposition of the sort that G. E. Moore defended in his defence of common sense (Moore 1925). They concede that microscopic particles exhibit collective behaviour in the presence of which it is usual to believe that a mountain is present, but they classify that belief as false. They hold that although the ordinary use of the word mountain has some utility, because it registers genuine discriminations between different sorts of situation in which different sorts of action are appropriate, it also embodies a mistaken metaphysical theory as to what the difference between those sorts of situation consists in (of course, sceptics who 1 Objection: Modal and counterfactual thinking is applied here to what would happen if philosophers encountered real life Gettier cases. Reply: Scepticism about this application is not crucial to scepticism about the Gettier intuitions. This reinforces the point that such scepticism focusses on the application of epistemic rather than modal and counterfactual concepts. Another objection: Nozick (1981, ) analyses knowledge in counterfactual terms; on his view, any judgement about knowledge implicitly involves judgements concerning counterfactual conditionals. Reply: His analysis does not make philosophical judgements about knowledge any more modal than non-philosophical ones are. Anyway, sceptics about epistemological intuition make no appeal to counterfactual analyses of knowledge. After all, the way in which Nozick reaches his conclusions exemplifies the very methodology about which they are sceptical. Nor would they regard their scepticism as undermined by growing evidence that counterfactual analyses of knowledge are incorrect (Williamson 2000, ). Their scepticism is intended to get its grip irrespective of whether knowledge is a modal matter. 2 Van Inwagen 1995 and Horgan 1996 defend similar views. The text presents a typical view without attempting to follow any one metaphysician in detail.

5 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 113 doubt that there are really any mountains may also be committed to doubting that there are really any words or beliefs, but let us ignore such complications for the time being, just as the sceptics tend to do). The claim that there are no mountains is usually regarded as counterintuitive. Even its proponents may concede that it is counterintuitive, but argue that the cost to intuition is worth paying for the overall gain in simplicity, strength, logical coherence and consonance with the results of the natural sciences that they attribute to their total metaphysical system, of which the claim is a consequence. If their system also entails that there could not have been mountains, then it contradicts the modal intuition that there could have been mountains. But far more striking is the contradiction between the non-modal claim that there are no mountains and the common sense judgement that there are mountains, for example in Switzerland. Whether or not they themselves agree that there are no mountains, many contemporary metaphysicians would think it philosophically naive to dismiss the revisionary metaphysical system out of hand by appealing to our elementary geographical knowledge that there are mountains in Switzerland. They may concede that perception, memory and testimony contribute much to the judgement, but insist that intuition also plays a part in judging that what there is in Switzerland amounts to mountains, and that we cannot assume that such intuitions are reliable. Thus doubts about intuition also arise for non-modal judgements. Even the straightforward perceptual judgement Those are mountains (pointing in the Alps) is subject to such doubts, so they extend to what would ordinarily be classified as judgements of perception rather than of intuition. Examples involving empirically encountered cases suggest that scepticism about intuition consists not in scepticism about a special kind of judgement but in a special kind of scepticism about any judgement. That scepticism does not target the most distinctive features of perception, memory, testimony, or inductive or deductive inference. Rather, it targets our practices of applying concepts in judgement. Let us call such scepticism scepticism about judgement. It does not question the existence of an external world to which we are causally related in the ways appropriate to perception, for example (at least, not until the concepts of causation and perception themselves come under scrutiny). Indeed, many sceptics about judgement are naturalists; their rhetoric is frequently scientistic. They present themselves as identifying ways in which our conceptual practices need, or may need, revision in the light of scientific advances that those practices, unsurprisingly, failed to anticipate. They doubt that we should go on in the same way. A sceptic about judgement need not advocate scepticism about all judgements; total scepticism about judgement, if thoroughly applied, would result

6 114 Timothy Williamson in total intellectual paralysis. The term sceptic about judgement will be applied to those who are sceptical in the way just described about some contextually relevant judgements. Whether their sceptical arguments generalize further than they would like is another matter. Sceptics about judgement question in particular our standards for applying ordinary concepts in experience, for example the concept of a mountain, or the concept of knowledge. Of course, ordinary modal concepts are not immune to such attacks. Sceptics about judgement may criticize our standards for applying the concept of possibility, or of the counterfactual conditional. But such criticisms are just more cases of scepticism about judgement; they are neither the only cases nor uniquely central ones. There is a tendency to call judgements intuitive in a given context, whether or not they are modal in content, when the form of scepticism that arises most saliently for them in that context is scepticism about judgement. In that sense, even a perceptual judgement may count as intuitive. Similarly, the existential judgement There are mountains may be considered intuitive even though it is inferential, derived from the perceptual demonstrative judgement Those are mountains by a step of existential generalization. In what follows, the word intuition will be used in that loose way, without any purported reference to a mysterious faculty of intuition. Like other sceptics, sceptics about judgement construct scenarios to explain how we could come to make the judgements at issue even if they were false. The debunking explanation is supposed to convince us that massive deception is at least possible. The scenarios for scepticism about judgement are often distinctive in attempting to verify the scientific image of the world while falsifying the manifest image, the common sense view of the world or what passes for such in our culture. Sometimes they allow that the ability to use the key terms of ordinary language (such as mountain ) in the ordinary way confers some evolutionary advantage, because it helps us communicate to each other genuine but perhaps misdescribed differences between different situations. The disposition to apply such terms immediately on the basis of casual observation contributes to practical efficiency. Such unreflective discriminations have survival value in harsh environments, where quick decisions are needed. If our ancestors could not have made them before discovering the true theory of reality, we should not be here. Although the physical theory embedded in our intuitions has to be approximately correct in its predictions over a limited range of practically important cases, we do not expect it to match or even resemble the true physics in its representation of the underlying reality. Why should we expect intuition to do much better elsewhere? The cheapest, fastest and easiest conceptual route for us to making some useful discrimina-

7 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 115 tions may run through dirty ways of thought that presuppose a false but convenient metaphysics. In other cases, sceptics may regard a conceptual practice as of merely local value, or even as doing more harm than good. For example, if standards for applying the term know vary radically with cultural background, then an evolutionary explanation of my current standard is less plausible. The sceptic might tell a different and more sociological story about the cultural role of knowledge ascriptions that detaches them from their truth-conditions. The story might imply that such ascriptions nevertheless fulfil a positive social function to which their cultural variability adapts them. But we can also envisage more sinister stories, on which they somehow serve as instruments of intellectual repression. Traditional sceptics argue that we do not know that we are not in a sceptical scenario; they do not argue that we actually are in such a scenario, for their point is that we cannot know what our situation really is. For them, the claim that we are in the common sense scenario is no better in epistemic status, but also no worse, than the claim that we are in the sceptical scenario. By contrast, many sceptics about judgement argue that we actually are in their sceptical scenario, for example in which there are no mountains. If they hold that we can recognise that their argument is sound, they must also hold that we can deduce that we are actually in their sceptical scenario. That involves them in no immediate inconsistency, for their scepticism is intended to be partial; they might compare it to scepticism about superstition. They present their views as superior to intuitive judgements in compatibility with the results of the natural sciences. They take for granted that those results have some positive epistemic status. Indeed, they often treat them as scientific knowledge. They feel a crisis of confidence in common sense, but not in scientific method. Sceptics about judgement need not puritanically insist that nobody should ever say things like There are mountains in Switzerland. At least some of their debunking explanations imply that in many everyday contexts those are good, useful things to say: outside the metaphysics seminar, utterances of There are mountains in Switzerland tend to have more desirable effects than do utterances of There are no mountains in Switzerland. Discovering the true theory of metaphysics will not change that. Even revisionary metaphysicians can continue to say such things, just as they can continue to say things like The sun will rise at 6 a.m. tomorrow. But, they hold, those things are not strictly and literally true: the sun will not strictly and literally rise at 6 a.m. tomorrow, and there are not strictly and literally any mountains in Switzerland. If we want to think what is really true, we must think with the learned; but for

8 116 Timothy Williamson many purposes it is enough to say what is to all appearances true, and speak with the vulgar. We can live most of our lives on the basis of a fiction, revisionists may say; only when we take a more scientific attitude are we forced to recognize the fiction for what it is. Is intuition anything more than the last resort of dogmatic conservativism, in its desperate attempt to hold back the forward march of scientific and metaphysical progress? We may wonder how sceptics about judgement can prevent their scepticism from spreading as far as the sciences themselves. For it infects standard perceptual judgements, on which the natural sciences systematically depend: microscopes, telescopes and other scientific instruments enhance ordinary perception but do not replace it, for we need ordinary perception to use the instruments. Moreover, when scientists judge that a given complex body of evidence of various kinds supports one theory against another, what is the status of their judgement? In applying concepts of epistemic appraisal they are not immune to scepticism about judgement. For instance, they are vulnerable to it when they judge that empirical evidence tells against the reliability of intuition. In practice, sceptics about judgement are often sceptical about only a few intuitions or concepts at a time, but the underlying forms of argument are far more general. We may suspect that scepticism about judgement is a bomb that, if it detonates properly, will blow up the bombers and those whom they hope to promote together with everyone else. But it does not follow that we can dismiss scepticism about judgement as self-defeating. That the revolutionary movement would be incapable of establishing a stable new government of its own does not show that it is incapable of bringing the old government down. At worst, sceptics about judgement are troublemakers who put on the table arguments that we find powerful and in need of a proper response, irrespective of their dubious motives for putting them there Intuitions and appearances. Different forms of scepticism distinguish themselves from each other by questioning some things while leaving others unquestioned. The sceptic about induction grants that all emeralds observed so far were green, in order to question the distinctively inductive step to the conclusion that all emeralds will always be green. The sceptic about deduction grants the premises that if P then Q and that P of an inference by modus ponens, in order to question the distinctively deductive step to its conclusion that Q. The sceptic about testimony grants that someone has said that it was raining, but questions whether she 3 Compare Feyerabend 1978, 143.

9 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 117 spoke the truth. The sceptic about memory grants that my experience is as of remembering that it was raining, but questions whether I really remember that it was raining. Scepticism about perception grants that my experience is as of seeing that it is raining, so that it visually appears to me that it is raining, but questions whether the experience is veridical. In each case, the sceptic concedes an evidential base, but accuses us of going illegitimately beyond it. For the sceptic about judgement, often the only evidential base to hand short of the disputed proposition itself is the conscious inclination to assent to that proposition, to make the judgement. If scepticism about judgement is treated by analogy with scepticism about perception, then its evidential base will be described as intellectual appearances, somehow analogous to perceptual appearances. George Bealer has defended just such an account of intuitions as intellectual seemings (Bealer 1998, 207; Bealer 2002, 73). Of course, they lack the rich phenomenology of perceptual seemings. In its perceptually appearing to one that something is the case, almost always much else perceptually appears to one too: that various things have various specific shapes and sizes, colours, sounds, tastes, textures, smells... By contrast, in the moment of its intellectually appearing to one that something is the case, often little else intellectually appears to one. Perhaps mathematical intuition can have a rich phenomenology, even a quasi-perceptual one, for example in geometry: but the conscious inclination to judge that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge is not like that. Any accompanying imagery is irrelevant. Nevertheless, the phenomenological disanalogy between perceptual seemings and intellectual seemings, in the sense of conscious inclinations to judgement, does not show that no epistemological analogy can be maintained. Scepticism about perception typically narrows one s evidential base to one s present internal mental state. When I can see and hear and feel that it is raining, I might suppose my total evidence to include the fact that it is raining, available for assessing hypotheses, for example the hypothesis that the grass will grow. 4 But the sceptic about perception insists that I have available as evidence only the fact that it perceptually appears to me that it is raining, for sometimes what perceptually appears to me is not the case. From that fact about my present internal mental state I am challenged to reason legitimately outwards to the conclusion about my external environment that it really is raining. The sceptic about perception asks by what right I treat the fact that it perceptually appears to me that it is raining as good evidence that it is raining. 4 The word fact is used throughout for true propositions.

10 118 Timothy Williamson Scepticism about judgement narrows and internalizes our evidential base in a similar way without going as far as scepticism about perception, since it does not usually exclude mental states of other people or at other times. After reading Gettier s article, we might suppose our total evidence to include the fact that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, as evidence available for assessing hypotheses, such as the hypothesis that justified true belief is knowledge. But the sceptic about judgement insists that we have available as evidence only the fact that it intellectually appears to us (perhaps the members of a restricted group) that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, in other words, the fact that we are consciously inclined to judge that the subject lacks knowledge, for sometimes what intellectually appears to us is not the case. From that fact about our internal mental states we are challenged to reason legitimately outwards to the conclusion that the subject in a Gettier case really does lack knowledge. The sceptic about judgement asks by what right we treat the fact that it intellectually appears to us that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, the fact that we are consciously inclined to assent to that proposition, as good evidence that the proposition is true. How does sceptical pressure psychologize our conception of our evidence? Given that it is rational to proportion one s degree of credence in a proposition to its probability on one s evidence, those who assume that one must always be in a position to know what rationality requires of one will also tend to suppose that one must always be in a position to know what one s evidence is. In that sense, they require an operational standard of evidence. They will therefore be reluctant to admit any differences in evidence between sceptical scenarios and the corresponding non-sceptical scenarios, for typically, if one is in a sceptical scenario, one is in no position to know that one is not in the corresponding non-sceptical scenario, and is therefore in no position to know that one s evidence differs from what it would have been in that non-sceptical scenario. Since the fact that it is raining is not available as evidence in the sceptical scenario in which it merely perceptually appears to one that it is raining, the fact that it is raining is held to be equally unavailable as evidence in the non-sceptical scenario in which it really is raining, all one s perceptual systems are functioning normally and one seems to perceive that it is raining. Similarly, confronted with a philosophical example, it may appear as obvious to us that P as that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, even though it subsequently turns out to be false that P. For example, P might stand for the proposition in a subtle semantic paradox that if John says Everything Mary says is true then John speaks truly if and only if everything Mary says is true. Although we may later be in a position to know that it is untrue that P, and

11 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 119 therefore not obvious that P, nevertheless when we originally judged that P we were not in a position to know that it was untrue that P, or even that it was less obvious that P than that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, for we were not then in a position to know the results of extended philosophical discussion of the example. A standard of evidence whose application can involve contentious philosophizing is not operational in the intended sense. On any standard of evidence on which our evidence includes the fact that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, we are not always in the relevant sense in a position to know what our evidence is. Contrapositively, we are always in a position to know what our evidence is only if our evidence does not include the fact that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge. Thus, for both perception and philosophical judgement, the demand for an operational standard of evidence drives even many non-sceptics to adopt the psychologized standard of evidence to which the sceptics appeal. By that standard, one s evidence is only the fact that it perceptually or intellectually appears to one that P, not the fact that P itself. The result is the uneasy conception which many contemporary analytic philosophers have of their own methodology. They think that, in philosophy, our ultimate evidence consists only of intuitions. Under pressure, they take that not to mean that our ultimate evidence consists of the mainly non-psychological putative truths that are the contents of those intuitions. Rather, they take it to mean that our ultimate evidence consists of the psychological truths that we have intuitions with those contents, whether true or false. 5 That is, our ultimate evidence in philosophy amounts only to psychological facts about ourselves. Nevertheless, they do not want the psychological fact that we have an intuition that P to be perfectly neutral with respect to the non-psychological question whether P, for that would lead to scepticism about philosophy, with the possible exception of philosophy of mind and language. If we merely seek the best explanation of our having the intuitions, without any presumption in favour of their truth, we may find a psychological theory to explain them, but how are we to answer the questions about a mainly non-psychological universe that grip many metaphysicians and other philosophers? Perhaps intuitions about thought and language have a special epistemic status, because they help to constitute their own subject matter; but to generalize that claim to all intuitions in philosophy is to fall into a silly idealism. The nature of identity over 5 A recent example is Brian Weatherson (2003, 27), who assumes that the argument from Gettier cases against the justified true belief analysis of knowledge has the premise Intuition says that Gettier cases are not cases of knowledge rather than the simpler Gettier cases are not cases of knowledge.

12 120 Timothy Williamson time, for example, is not a matter of thought or language: the question is how things persist, not how we think or say that they persist. In explaining why we have intuitions, analytic philosophy has a preference for explanations on which those intuitions come out true over explanations on which they come out untrue, but the justification for that preference remains unclear. Even if we have an intuition that the former sort of explanation is better than the latter, why should we give that intuition a special privilege over others by adopting a methodology that assumes its truth? That our ultimate evidence in philosophy consists of facts about intuitions and that explanations of those facts on which the intuitions come out true are better (ceteris paribus) than explanations on which they do not are themselves epistemological rather than psychological claims. When taken far enough, the psychologization of philosophical method becomes self-defeating. Psychologism is no more a psychological theory than the Pythagorean doctrine that everything consists of numbers is a mathematical theory. 6 The search for a purely operational standard of evidence is in any case vain. It can be argued on quite general grounds that no standard of evidence is such that we are always in a position to know what our evidence is (Williamson 2000, ; ). The general argument will not be rehearsed here, but it is easy enough to gain some sense of the difficulty. Whatever Descartes thought, facts about one s own present consciousness are not always cognitively accessible to one. For example, how am I to judge whether my present conscious inclination to judge that P is strong enough to count as an intuition that P? If all such inclinations count, no matter how weak, then the category of intuition will lump together very weak and very strong intuitions: yet an adequately fine-grained theory of evidence must surely discriminate between very weak and very strong intuitions in evidential impact. If the strength of intuitions is taken into account, the evidence will be recorded in something like the form I have an intuition of strength s that P. The strength parameter s will have to be specified according to some common scale, in order to permit the comparisons between the strengths of sometimes conflicting intuitions which the theory of evidence will need to make. But then there will be plenty of scope for misjudging the strength of one s intuitions. After all, philosophers defending a given position against opponents have a powerful vested interest in persuading themselves that the intuitions that directly or indirectly favour it are 6 Pust 2001 argues carefully that the following principle is self-defeating: Aside from propositions describing the occurrence of her judgements, S is justified in believing only those propositions which are part of the best explanation of S s making the judgements that she makes. This represents a change in position from Goldman and Pust 1998.

13 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 121 stronger than they actually are. The stronger those intuitions, the more those who appeal to them gain, both psychologically and professionally. Given what is known of human psychology, it would be astonishing if such vested interests did not manifest themselves in at least some degree of wishful thinking, some tendency to overestimate the strength of intuitions that help one s cause and underestimate the strength of those that hinder it. If one tries to compensate for such bias effects, one may be led to undercompensate or overcompensate; the standpoint of consciousness gives one no very privileged access to whether one has succeeded, for bias does not work by purely conscious processes. Its effects are much easier to observe in others than in oneself. There may be further obstacles to knowledge of one s own intuitions too. For example, philosophers with a tin ear for natural language sometimes seem to misarticulate their own strong intuitions, using forms of words that do not express what they really want to say. The foregoing arguments do not show that we are not often or typically in a position to know what intuitions we have. The point is just that not even facts about intuition meet the fully operational standard for evidence that was used to exclude other facts. If sceptical scenarios for the claim that there are mountains in Switzerland or that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge mean that our evidence in philosophy cannot include the non-psychological fact that there are mountains in Switzerland or the fact that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge, then the sceptical scenarios just indicated for the claim that we have an intuition that there are mountains in Switzerland or that we have an intuition that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge mean that our evidence in philosophy cannot include the psychological fact that we have an intuition that there are mountains in Switzerland or the fact that we have an intuition that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge. If we go down that road, we shall soon have no evidence left. Once we relinquish the hopelessly demanding operational standard for evidence, it is unclear why our evidence should not include the non-psychological fact that there are mountains in Switzerland or the fact that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge. The retreat to confining evidence to psychological facts might be defended on more pragmatic grounds. In debate, one cannot hope to persuade opponents by appealing to evidence that they do not accept. Predictably, they will accuse one of begging the question. A fact can function as evidence in the debate only if both sides are willing to accept it. If one party asserts that P while the other party denies that P, they cannot use the fact that P as shared evidence, but they can use the fact that the first party asserts that P as shared evidence, because they presumably agree on that. More interestingly, the second party may also

14 122 Timothy Williamson feel some inclination to judge that P, but resist it because they take it to be defeated by countervailing theoretical considerations. In that case, both parties may agree that they share a conscious inclination to judge that P, an intersubjective rather than merely idiosyncratic phenomenon. They can therefore use the fact that there is a shared intuition that P as shared evidence, of which they will offer rival explanations. Perhaps the first party will say that we have the intuition that P because we recognize the obvious fact that P, while the second party says that we have the intuition that P because we are socially conditioned to do so when we are inducted into a conceptual practice that is convenient for everyday purposes but fails to fit the underlying facts and may even be incoherent. On the pragmatic view, what allows psychological facts about our intuitions to serve as evidence in a given context is that they happen to be uncontroversial in that context, not that they are uncontroversial in all contexts, or foundational in some deeper sense. Currently undisputed non-psychological truths can be used as evidence too. We can get by with agreement on particular pieces of evidence without having a fully operational standard for evidence in general. This dialectical conception of evidence is applicable even to an isolated thinker, for in isolation one can still play rival theories against each other in one s head. Virtual opponents suffice for much philosophical thinking. The dialectical standard does not favour the use of psychological facts about our intuitions as evidence in all philosophical contexts for, as we have seen, such facts can also be controversial. Disagreements sometimes arise as to the strength of various intuitions, their genuineness or their proper expression. Some possible causes of such disagreement were noted above. Furthermore, the very idea of intuition is controversial in some philosophical circles. Radical eliminativists about the mind may say Research in neurophysiology has shown that folk psychology is a false theory; its ascriptions of mental states and acts are never strictly and literally true, however convenient they may have been (let us not ask whether radical eliminativists believe what they say). On their view, humans are incapable of judging that P, because judging is a folkpsychological propositional attitude; thus humans are never inclined to judge that P, consciously or otherwise, and so never have the intuition that P. In particular, consistent radical eliminativists will not even concede that radical eliminativism is counterintuitive, or that we have the intuition that we have beliefs and desires. If one wants to find common ground with radical eliminativists, then one must rigorously depsychologize one s evidence, and replace intuitions by the results of brain scans. Similarly, sceptics about dispositions doubt that anything or anyone is ever disposed or inclined to be or do anything.

15 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 123 In particular, they will refuse to admit that anyone is really inclined to judge anything, and therefore refuse to admit that anyone really has intuitions. Thus the dialectical standard excludes the use of psychological facts about our intuitions as evidence in some philosophical contexts. There are general grounds for dissatisfaction with the dialectical standard of evidence. To test one s beliefs by one s ability to persuade a sceptic of their truth is to play a dangerous game. With that narrow common ground as one s basis, one has little chance of success. If one uses only premises and forms of inference that a sceptic about perception will allow one, and therefore only premises that are true and forms of inference that are valid even if one is a brain in a vat, then one has little prospect of mounting a good argument to the conclusion that one has hands. But it is widely, although not universally, acknowledged that it does not follow that we do not know that we have hands. To be genuine, knowledge need not be recoverable from an impoverished sceptical starting-point. After all, if one uses only premises and forms of inference that sceptics about reason will allow one, then one cannot mount a good argument to the conclusion that there are good reasons. For since such sceptics doubt that there are good reasons, they will allow one neither the proposition that there are good reasons as a premise nor any form of inference (reasoning) at all with which to reach it as a conclusion from some other starting-point. But it would be frivolous to conclude, from that trivial point, that we do not know that there are good reasons. Indeed, even sceptics about reason must deny that conclusion to follow, for they deny that any conclusion follows. Sometimes, in self-defence, one must abandon sceptics to their fate. Some scepticism, such as scepticism about reason, is so radical that it leaves too little unchallenged for what remains as shared evidence to be an appropriate basis for evaluating the propositions under challenge. When one is warranted in refusing to play the sceptic s dialectical game, the dialectical standard of evidence becomes irrelevant. In so refusing, one does not abandon one s claims to knowledge and reason, because the appropriate standard of evidence is nondialectical. By that standard, the sceptic s peremptory challenge fails to disqualify the challenged fact as evidence. One continues to assert propositions of the disputed kind on the basis of appropriate evidence, without expecting to be able to mount arguments for them using only premises and forms of inference that sceptics about propositions of that kind will allow one. Since escape from the radical sceptical predicament is impossible, one takes good care not to get into that predicament in the first place. Is the attitude just sketched a legitimate response to scepticism about judgement? For example, may one take one s evidence to include the fact that the

16 124 Timothy Williamson subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge or that there are mountains in Switzerland, even though the sceptic about judgement denies one the right to such evidence? In reaching one s views, one does not restrict oneself to premises and forms of inference that sceptics about judgement will allow one, for one regards their restricted evidence base as too wilfully impoverished to constitute a reasonable starting-point for evaluating the propositions in which one is interested. Sceptics about judgement have not shown that the facts that they allow as evidence are really more certain than the facts that they disallow. In particular, it is quite insufficient for them to point out that it is logically possible for us to judge that there are mountains in Switzerland even if there are no mountains in Switzerland, for it is equally logically possible for us to judge that we have the intuition that there are mountains in Switzerland even if we lack the intuition that there are mountains in Switzerland. Even if (let us pretend) facts about our intuitions were in some sense more certain for us than all other facts, it would not follow that we should restrict our evidence base to facts about our intuitions. For the extra information in a much wider evidence base might be worth the cost in a slight loss of reliability. After all, if logical truths were more certain than all other facts, it would not follow that we should restrict our evidence base to logical truths: that would prevent us from gaining any empirical knowledge. It would be scepticism about everything except reason. One might find this short way with the sceptic about judgement contrary to the open spirit of philosophical discussion. The sceptic has serious concerns of a recognizably philosophical kind: do they not deserve a fair hearing? How can they be given such a hearing if the very propositions that the sceptic challenges are taken as evidence? Sceptics of any principled kind can indeed expect more tolerance in philosophy than in other disciplines. One can discuss their scepticism with them without stepping outside the bounds of philosophy. In talking to them, it is pointless to offer for their acceptance propositions that one knows them to be unwilling to accept. In particular, it seems unphilosophical to refuse to discuss scepticism about judgement with its proponents. In conversation with them, it is dialectically pointless, rude, to offer as evidence propositions that one knows them to reject. But the issue remains: what implications, if any, does the outcome of such a conversation have for the epistemic status of belief in the propositions that the sceptic questions? Faced with a sceptic about reason, or everything except reason, many philosophers would be willing to start a conversation, out of politeness, curiosity, competitiveness or the desire to save a soul. But their inability to achieve a dialectical triumph over such a resourceful opponent does not oblige them to become sceptics

17 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 125 about reason, or everything except reason, themselves. There is no bad faith in continuing to claim knowledge of the contested truths. For the anti-sceptic is not obliged to treat dialectic as the measure of all things. Indeed, the claim that dialectic is the measure of all things faces self-defeat, for it cannot triumph dialectically over its denial; even if it appeared to be getting the better of the argument, would not taking that to establish its truth beg the question? Similarly, even if one cannot establish dialectically, in dispute with the sceptic about judgement, that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge or that there are mountains in Switzerland, without bad faith one can still claim to know that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge or that there are mountains in Switzerland. The conception of our evidence in philosophy as merely psychological facts to the effect that we have various intuitions does not withstand epistemological scrutiny. But should we think of such facts concerning our own intuitions as merely psychological facts about us anyway? 3. Intuition and conservativism. According to scepticism about judgement, that we have the intuition that P is a merely psychological fact about us: typically, it has no bearing on the question whether P. That attitude is hard to sustain with respect to one s own intuitions. To have the intuition that P is to be consciously inclined to judge that P. Suppose that I judge according to my inclinations. Judging that P is the active form of believing that P. How can I regard it as a merely psychological fact about myself that I believe that P? That P entails that whoever believes that P has a true belief that P, for the belief that P is true if and only if P. Therefore, in believing that P, I am committed to the belief that the belief that P is true, and to the belief that I must continue believing that P if I am to continue believing the truth as to whether P. 7 Thus I cannot be cognitively neutral towards my own beliefs. I must regard them as true beliefs, not as mere psychological phenomena. Consequently, when I judge as I am inclined to, I cannot be cognitively neutral towards my own intuitions. I am committed to them in a way in which I am not committed to my own fantasies. This commitment might be thought to explain the epistemic role of intuitions. They are what we start from, the boat that we find ourselves in. Perhaps we can progressively replace them, but we cannot distance ourselves from all of them at once, for we have nowhere else to stand. That is why one is bound to give primacy to one s 7 For simplicity, propositions are assumed to be so individuated that they cannot change in truth-value over time.

18 126 Timothy Williamson own intuitions over those of other people in one s philosophical thinking, even when one knows only too well that the others have conflicting intuitions. By contrast, when one treats intuitions as mere psychological phenomena, in the evaluation of a psychological theory, data about one s own intuitions carry no greater evidential weight than do data about the intuitions of others: but when one judges according to one s inclinations, one cannot treat one s own intuitions in that psychologistic manner. The practical necessity of starting from where one is may be elevated to normative status in a principle of epistemic conservativism: that one has a defeasible right to one s beliefs, which right may be defeated by positive reasons for doubt, but not by the mere absence of independent justification. 8 Thus one s belief that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge or that there are mountains in Switzerland gives one the defeasible right to rest arguments on the premise that the subject in a Gettier case lacks knowledge or that there are mountains in Switzerland. In order to assess such an account of the role of intuitions, we must be clearer about the relation between intuition and belief. For David Lewis, Our intuitions are simply opinions (Lewis 1983a, x). Are intuitions just beliefs? In the previous sense, an intuition that P is a conscious inclination to judge that P. For Peter van Inwagen, Our intuitions are simply our beliefs or perhaps, in some cases, the tendencies that make certain beliefs attractive to us, that move us in the direction of accepting certain propositions without taking us all the way to acceptance (van Inwagen 1997, 309; he adds parenthetically Philosophers call their philosophical beliefs intuitions because intuition sounds more authoritative than belief ). Even if one discounts unconscious beliefs and the difference between the state of believing and the act of judging, one can still distinguish the two accounts of intuition. For we do not always follow our inclinations; someone inclined to believe that P may nevertheless not believe that P. I am tempted to believe that a smooth stone is smooth even at the microscopic level, but I resist the temptation because I know better. In this respect, the analogy between intuitions and perceptual appearances is apt. When the stick looks bent in water, I am tempted to believe that it is bent, but I resist the temptation because I know better. Background 8 See Harman (1986, 29-42) for a defence of epistemic conservativism, and Vahid 2003 for a recent critical survey of its varieties. For the sake of both simplicity and generality, subtleties in the formulation of the principle have been glossed over. The closely related method of reflective equilibrium described by Goodman 1965 and Rawls 1971 shows how a philosophical position can evolve from an original set of intuitions; it is discussed in several essays in DePaul and Ramsey 1998.

19 Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement 127 information can defeat our inclination to take perceptual or intellectual appearances at face value. The difference between belief and inclination to belief may matter for the principle of epistemic conservativism. Suppose that Justin has been brought up to believe that knowledge is to be analysed as justified true belief. He is confronted for the first time with a Gettier case. He might immediately judge with confidence that the subject has justified true belief without knowledge, and abandon his old belief that justified true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge; presumably, epistemic conservativism then switches sides and starts supporting his new belief that justified true belief is not necessary and sufficient for knowledge. But suppose instead that Justin is more cautious, not wanting to assent to anything tricky too readily. Although he is consciously inclined to judge that the subject has justified true belief without knowledge, he does not immediately give in to that inclination, nor does he immediately abandon his ingrained belief that justified true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge. It is not clear that epistemic conservativism counsels abandoning the traditional analysis in this situation. Although the Gettier case might be counted a positive reason for doubting the traditional analysis, epistemic conservativism as formulated above does not explain why it should. If Justin is asked What reason is there to doubt the traditional analysis?, the answer The subject in this possible case has justified true belief without knowledge would obviously be relevant, since it expresses a proposition inconsistent with the traditional analysis. But he is in a position to give that answer only if he already believes that the subject in the Gettier case has justified true belief without knowledge. Since he does not already believe that, he has to say something else. The answer I am inclined to believe that the subject in this possible case has justified true belief without knowledge might be relevant if the function of the words I am inclined to believe that were to signal tentative assent to the proposition expressed by what follows, but Justin s commitment to the traditional analysis may disincline him to give even tentative assent to a putative counterexample unless he is forced to do so. If the function of the words I am inclined to believe that is instead to report his psychological state of being inclined to believe the proposition expressed by what follows, as their literal meaning suggests, then the relevance of the answer to the original question is far from obvious, for he has not yet given even tentative assent to the Gettier case as a counterexample. Might epistemic conservativism be extended to claim that one has a defeasible right to believe whatever one is inclined to believe? Such an extension is much less clearly motivated than the original principle by the idea that,

20 128 Timothy Williamson since one must start from where one is, one has at least a defeasible right to be where one is. A right to be where I am is a right to have the beliefs and inclinations that I have. That does not obviously include a right to follow those inclinations to new places, especially when the beliefs that I already have imply that those are bad places to go to, for example, when the inclinations are to believe things inconsistent with my current beliefs. As the Gettier counterexamples show, intuition can be revolutionary as well as conservative. If I currently believe that P, then I am currently committed to the belief that any inclination to believe something that entails that it is not the case that P is an inclination to believe something false. In the way in which I am committed to the propositions that I believe, I am not committed to the propositions that I am merely inclined to believe; I am merely inclined to commit myself to them in that way. After all, a right to be where I am is of limited practical use unless it involves a right to stay where I am, to continue believing, at least for a while, what I currently believe. A further problem faces the attempt to base a response to scepticism about judgement on the first person present tense of believe. Even if it explains why one cannot regard one s own current beliefs as the products of a sceptical scenario, it does not explain why one should not think that most beliefs are such products. If I believe that P, then I am committed to the belief that the belief that P is true. That point can be generalized over all subjects at all times in all possible worlds. But, obviously, the correct generalization does not imply that if I believe that P, then you are committed to the belief that the belief that P is true, for you may consistently believe that I am wrong although of course if you do believe that P, then you are committed to the belief that the belief that P is true. Similarly, the correct generalization does not imply that if I believed yesterday or shall believe tomorrow that P, then I am committed today to the belief that the belief that P is true; I may believe today that my evidence yesterday or tomorrow is misleading although of course if I believed yesterday or shall believe tomorrow that P then I was committed yesterday or shall be committed tomorrow to the belief that the belief that P is true (see also Williamson 2000, 219). Nor does the correct generalization imply that, if I would have believed that P if things had been slightly different, then I am actually committed to the belief that in those counterfactual circumstances the belief that P would have been true although of course if I believed in those circumstances that P then I would be committed in those circumstances to the belief that the belief that P was true. While strongly committed to the truth of my own actual present beliefs, I might regard the beliefs of other subjects and my own beliefs at other times or in other possible circumstances as in massive

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